


between your heart and mine

by HereComeDatBoi



Series: you're the one that's making me strong [24]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: And a good father, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Domestic Fluff, Gen, M/M, Married Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Parenthood, References to Depression, Shiro (Voltron) is a Good Husband, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), give Adam the love he deserves 2k19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 05:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21489160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereComeDatBoi/pseuds/HereComeDatBoi
Summary: According to a lengthy article featured in the National Journal of Parenting, children tend to notice depression in their parents between the ages of ten and twelve.Sonia Shirogane noticed it in her father five months after her third birthday.
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: you're the one that's making me strong [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1261916
Comments: 10
Kudos: 28





	between your heart and mine

According to a lengthy article featured in the  _ National Journal of Parenting,  _ children tend to notice depression in their parents between the ages of ten and twelve. 

But Sonia Shirogane, gifted as she was, noticed it in her father five months after her third birthday. 

Sonia’s parents were usually happy, she thought. They giggled like a pair of schoolboys when they held hands under the dinner table (which was always) and laughed over their pots and frying pans in the kitchen while they were making breakfast, and seemed to hold the sun itself in their voices when they read her stories or tucked her into bed―but today they were practically glowing with happiness from the tops of their heads to their toes, and when her tou-chan put down a plate of eggs and waffles in front of her he made her Papa sit down rather than letting him help make them. 

“You tell her the news, sunshine,” he said, giving her Papa a long soft look that could have melted an iceberg if it tried hard enough. “I’ll finish your breakfast in a minute.”

And with that he left Sonia and her Papa together at the table, Sonia with half a waffle in her mouth and Papa with his hands clasped under his chin as if he were thinking very hard about something. 

“Soniye,” Papa said at last, lifting her into his lap and putting his chin in her hair instead. “What would you think of having a baby sister?”

Sonia blinked. This was an unexpected development, given her understanding of how babies usually happened; Auntie Pidge had allowed Sonia full reign of her library since she was old enough to walk ten steps without falling over, and one of the biology textbooks she found had explained in great detail how babies were made. Of course,  _ she  _ hadn’t been made that way; her parents had told her the story of how she was baked in a pod like a tiny cookie, but they had also mentioned that it was too dangerous to try a second time, even though they would love nothing more than for Sonia to have siblings to play with. 

She would have loved it too, she knew. Sonia sometimes felt like crying when she saw her friend Esperanza’s older brother coming to pick her up from school, but she had never asked for sisters or brothers of her own. Even though no one ever talked about it, Sonia was keenly aware that she had nearly cost her Papa’s life and broken her tou-chan’s heart just by being born. 

“But you can’t have babies the normal way,” she frowned, tilting her head back as far as she could to look into Papa’s face. “And tou-chan said it’s too dangerous to use the pod, so how am I getting a sister?”

“Well, things are different now,” her Papa said gently, kissing the tip of her nose. “It’s not dangerous for me anymore, moonbeam. So what do you say?”

In response she put her ear against his chest, ignoring his little startled huff of breath as she listened for the steady beat of his heart. There was something else there, she realized―something drawing off her Papa’s quintessence, and sending back the faintest traces of someone else’s. Sonia had never told anyone that she could sense people’s quintessence, but  _ this  _ quintessence was different; it was a little like Papa’s, and a little like tou-chan’s, and a little something different. The something different almost seemed as if it were sleeping, and in that moment she realized that there was only one person it could belong to. 

“Is  _ that  _ my baby sister?” she asked, awed. “I can feel her! She’s there, isn’t she?”

“Not quite,” Papa laughed, lifting her up to stand on his knees and sticking his tongue out at her when she pouted. “I have a quintessence siphon there that’s helping her grow. But she’s in your Auntie Pidge’s lab, getting baked just like you were.”

Things changed fairly quickly after that, and some of the changes were both pleasant and strange. Tou-chan rarely let Papa lift a finger around the house, and fussed over him endlessly when Sonia’s baby sister made him so tired that he called in sick to work and spent the day in bed under a pile of blankets. They fussed over her, too, both of them; Papa took two mornings off to paint her room the  _ exact  _ shade of lavender she loved best, and Tou-chan made her favorite sweet miso before taking her to school, telling her stories on the way about her Uncle Keith and Aunt Pidge when they were little and walking hand-in-hand with her until he put her safely into the arms of her favorite teacher at the door. 

But some of the changes were decidedly unpleasant, and it took Sonia only a week after her parents’ announcement to realize that something was  _ wrong.  _ Her papa wouldn’t leave his room for breakfast some days, and at night she could hear him crying into his pillow when he thought she and Tou-chan were asleep. His face grew thinner and thinner as the days went by, and all he would say when she asked him about it was that babies made you ill sometimes―at least until two months later, when he came home from a doctors’ visit and said he wasn’t going to teach again until after the baby arrived. 

“Why, Papa?” Sonia questioned, half-buried in a pile of tiny pink clothes Tou-chan’s students had given him. “Are your bosses being mean?”

“What? No, sunshine,” Papa sighed. “My bosses are Uncle Iverson and Aunt Sanda, remember? But my test results apparently mean I’m under too much stress, and it could be bad for me and Himeko, so Juliana advised that I rest until I’m feeling better.”

“You are going to, aren’t you, love?” Tou-chan said anxiously, putting a hand on Papa’s forehead and then on his cheek. “Right?”

“Of course I am. She suggested taking a holiday, or something, so I thought we could stay at the Shindola house until maybe May or June. Do you think―”

“ _ Anything,” _ interrupted Tou-chan, grabbing Papa’s hands and kissing the back of each one. “You need to relax and let me take care of you, honey. We’ll leave tomorrow if that’s what you want.”

As it turned out, that  _ was  _ what Papa wanted, so Sonia said goodbye to her friends at school the next day and boarded a plane that evening. She napped straight through the flight thanks to a carefully calculated period of self-imposed sleep deprivation, and woke up twelve hours later nestled in Tou-chan’s arms in an unfamiliar bed with Papa sleeping on her other side. 

“Where are we?” she whispered, pulling her Tou-chan’s hair until he blinked awake. “Are we lost?”

“We’re at the house your  _ ojii-chan  _ on Papa’s side gave us as a wedding present, baby. Go back to sleep, we’re both right here.”

And so, Sonia did. 

* * *

Amid the fun of exploring the new house―she had visited it once, almost a year ago, but two new rooms and a little courtyard had been added on since then―and playing in the garden over the next few weeks, Sonia took the time to notice that her Papa did seem better now that they were away from the Garrison; the hollows in his cheeks were gone, and his appetite had come back twice as strong it was before. But the strange sadness in his eyes seemed to linger, and whenever Tou-chan was out of the room he held Sonia in his arms and curled up in a corner of the sofa without saying anything for hours. She learned not to ask what was bothering him after a while; it was clearly something to do with her Tou-chan, and the idea of there being trouble between her parents hurt her so badly that she only closed her eyes as tightly as she could and tried not to cry into Papa’s shirt. 

“Tou-chan loves you more than anything, Papa,” Sonia ventured once, cuddled up to his side under a half-finished blanket Tou-chan was making for the new baby. “More than the whole world.”

“I  _ know _ ,” her Papa said. “I know, and that’s why I’m like this. I couldn’t stand it if he didn’t, it would kill me.”

“But he  _ does! _ ”

Papa said nothing after that, but Sonia had deduced that what he would have said was  _ “But what if he doesn’t one day?” _

She tried not to think about the answer, and spent the next fortnight reading quietly at her Papa’s feet even though he and her Tou-chan urged her to go play in the sun with the cats and her old friend Leela. But nothing seemed to get better, until one night when Sonia woke up to an empty bed and the sound of her Papa half-shouting and half-weeping in the living room down the hall. 

“Don’t you  _ see? _ ” he was crying. “I’ve been thinking about it and I can’t stop, even though I don’t have any reason to, and I can’t stop being afraid that one day you’re going to wake up and realize you didn’t sign up for any of this and  _ leave  _ us!”

“Leave you?” Her tou-chan sounded utterly heartbroken, on the verge of tears himself, and Sonia pulled the blankets up over her head in an attempt to block out the pain in it. “Why would I ever leave you―why would I even want to, I don’t understand―”

“Because you’re  _ better  _ than I am!” Papa screamed. “Because you walked out on me and Keith ten years ago after telling me I was throwing my life away by focusing on him rather than trying to join you in the space program, and that was when I was twenty-two and still making a name for myself! Now I’ve spent all but one out of the past five years hiding away in the AI development lab, and I haven’t seen the inside of a fighter since just after the war, and  _ someday  _ you’re going to realize the handsome pilot you fell in love with when you were fifteen  _ isn’t here anymore  _ and go running into space like you did the first time you figured it out!

“And I could take it then, because I had Keith to think about. But if you left me now―with Soniye, and now Hime-chan coming, I―I would’ve rather  _ died  _ than admit it to you before, but I―” 

The sentence was cut off by a fit of unintelligible sobs, and Sonia burrowed deeper under her blankets and sniffled as they went on and on and on. At last they quieted a little, and when she stretched a little tendril of thought towards Papa’s mind she realized that Tou-chan was holding him close on the sofa, rocking him back and forth in his arms the same way he did to Sonia whenever she cried. 

“The three of you are my life,” he said quietly, so simply and steadily that Sonia’s racing heartbeat went back to normal in a split second. “You’ve seen me half-mad when you were dying during the war, and again before Sonia arrived. Keith wasn’t enough to keep me alive the first time, and even Sonia couldn’t have been enough to make my life worth living if you were taken from me when she was born. I’ve spent a total of eighty-three days away from you since we were married―I counted―and I would rather take Zarkon’s gladiator ring again than relive a single one of them. I’m not leaving you now unless I leave in a casket, Adam. I’m yours, body and soul, and that’s never going to change while I still have breath in my body.”

“But you―”

“I wish I could go back in time and wring my own neck rather than let you hear those words from my lips,” Tou-chan whispered. “I didn’t mean them, sweetheart, I never did. I was cruel and angry and selfish and blind, and you should’ve thrown me out then and there for hurting you so much. Tell me what I can do to make it up to you, sunshine, and I’ll do it. I’ll do anything.”

But it seemed like that was all Sonia’s Papa needed to put the pieces of his heart back together, and when she peeked into the living room a few minutes later she found him and her Tou-chan locked in a tight embrace, pressed so close together that she could scarcely tell which limbs were whose and kissing desperately as if their lives depended on it. 

(Sonia had mixed opinions about the  _ desperate  _ kind of kisses. Despite the fact that her intelligence was well beyond the norm for her three-and-a-half years―Auntie Pidge had already taught her calculus, after all―she preferred friends and playmates near her own age, and her five-year-old cousin Kazha had informed her that  _ those  _ kinds of kisses were gross. His Papá and Daddy always kissed like that after missions, and Kazha usually called Sonia on Uncle Lance’s phone within the next five minutes to complain about it.)

“I guess kisses can’t be that bad,” she smiled to herself, creeping back to the bedroom and tucking herself in. “Not really.”

* * *

Three months later, on the twenty-fifth of June, Sonia was peacefully trying to color in a printed star in her class at the Garrison nursery school when her tou-chan came running into the room and asked breathlessly if he could borrow her for a minute. He bundled her off before her teacher even had time to say yes, and by the time they made it out of the building she realized what had to be going on. It had been almost half a year since her Papa told her about the new baby, and Tou-chan  _ had  _ mentioned that her sister would arrive in summer. 

“Is she here?” she shrieked, clambering out of her father’s grip and perching on his shoulders like a squirrel. “She’s here, isn’t she? Tell me, tell me,  _ tell me tell me tell me―” _

“She is,” her Tou-chan laughed, tossing her into the air and kissing her chubby brown cheeks until she squealed. “Now, you’re going to have to be really quiet, okay? Papa just had surgery, and the baby’s not used to being out in the world yet, so they both need their rest.”

“I will, I promise! Can I really see her now?”

In answer Tou-chan only led her down three more hallways and around a couple of corners before leading her into a private room in the medical wing. There were only three pieces of furniture in it: a sofa, a chair, and an uncomfortable-looking hospital bed, upon which her Papa lay fast asleep under a light blue blanket. 

“Is he okay?” Sonia whispered, reaching for his hand and sighing in relief when she found it as warm and solid as usual. “Tou-chan?”

“He’s just fine, moonbeam. He’ll wake up once his medicine wears off, and you can hug him all you want then as long as you don’t squeeze him too tight, okay?”

“Okay!” She hopped up and down on the spot, clinging tightly to her Tou-chan’s arm as he carried her over to the other side of the bed. There was something else there―something that looked like a clear plastic tub on a stand, and as Tou-chan lifted her up to see inside it all the breath went out of her little body in one long gasp of amazement. 

Sonia had often wondered what her baby sister would look like. Sometimes she thought she might look more like her and their Papa, with dark skin and the same delicate features Tou-chan was so delighted to see in Sonia herself, and sometimes she thought the baby might look like her Tou-chan instead, pale as a lily with a round button nose like Papa said he used to have in school―but none of that had prepared her for the sight of a chubby, fluffy-haired dumpling of an infant wrapped up in a hand-knitted quilt, sleeping peacefully with her long brown eyelashes brushing her cheeks like silk fans. Her small red lips were pursed up as if they were sucking on something, and Sonia knew right away that there had  _ never  _ been anyone even half as perfect as this new little person her Papa and tou-chan had made for her. She was the most beautiful thing Sonia had ever seen, and within those first two seconds the little girl realized that she had never loved anyone so much in all her life. 

“She’s  _ mine _ ,” she told her Tou-chan, carefully touching one of the tiny hands and almost bursting into tears when it closed around her finger. “You and Papa have to have another baby. I don’t want to share this one.”

He laughed and kissed the top of her head, lifting the baby into his arms as Sonia slipped down to the floor and leaned over to kiss her Papa’s sleeping face. 

“Sorry, Papa,” she whispered. “I know making a baby is really hard, but she belongs to me now, okay?”

“I don’t think he’ll mind, Soniye,” murmured Tou-chan, sitting down on the edge of Papa’s bed and stooping down to kiss the same place Sonia had. “She’s all yours, sweetheart. We got her just for you.”

“Really?”

“Nope,” he chuckled, grinning from ear to ear as she pouted and dived under her Papa’s blankets. “But I really don’t think you’ll mind sharing, moonbeam. Honest.”

“But that’s not fair!  _ Papa! _ ”

  
  



End file.
